
Less than two weeks before the scheduled hearings for the confirmation of charges against former president Rodrigo Duterte at the International Criminal Court, his lawyer is still trying to stop them from going forward.
Despite the Jan. 23 ruling of the Pre-Trial Chamber that the soon-to-be 81-year-old Duterte is fit to stand trial, his counsel, Nicholas Kaufman, insists that his client is “enfeebled.”
In an appeal filed Feb. 5 reiterating the indefinite adjournment of the hearings, Kaufman argued that the chamber committed substantial errors of fact and law when it declined to consider the medical report submitted by experts hired by Duterte. “The Medical Report detailed Mr Duterte’s lack of executive functioning, sustained planning capacity, and rapid decision-making—to say nothing of his enfeebled physical state—that would make it impossible for him to evade custody,” Kaufman said.






